Irish voters reject Lisbon Treaty

Voters in Ireland have rejected the Lisbon Treaty with the final results, 53.4% against and 46.6% in favor. All of the main political parties were in favor with Sinn Fein being the only party against it. The result has dealt a major blow for the EU as the treaty cannot legally be ratified by the remaining twelve countries that have not yet ratified it yet.

The yes side consisting of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and the Labor Party had been campaigning for a yes vote with the Fianna Fail leader Brian Cowen insisting that key areas sensitive to the Irish people such as neutrality, taxation, and abortion remained firmly in Irish control.

However in the end the no side won which included wide ranging organizations such as anti-abortion groups, and the most notable group Libertas, headed by millionaire Declan Ganley, who has come under critisism over where the group was getting its funding.

The main reasons for the no side were the loss of a commisioner for every five years, fears that abortion and immigration would be forced onto the country, and taxation.

The EU leaders will be meeting next week in what has been called a crisis meeting to see how the EU should proceed.

Woman sat on boyfriend's toilet for two years

Source

NESS CITY, Kan. - Deputies said a woman in western Kansas sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years, and they're investigating whether she was mistreated.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said a man called his office last month to report that something was wrong with his girlfriend.

Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

“And her reply would be, ‘Maybe tomorrow,”’ Whipple said. “According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom.”

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was “somewhat disoriented,” and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

“She said that she didn’t need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave,” he said.

She was taken to a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple’s names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz in Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.

“I don’t think anybody can make any sense out of it,” he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

“It really doesn’t surprise me,” Ellis said of the bathroom incident. “What surprises me is somebody wasn’t called in a bit earlier.

UK troops preparing for handover of Basra

UK troops stationed in the south of Iraq are preparing to handover control of the city Basra to Iraqi forces. It will mean the main priorities of the UK troops will be to train Iraqi forces to defend themselves from insurgents. The handover is expected within hours.

There has been doubts in the strength of the Iraqi authorities to control the violence especially in the Police force which is said to be rife with corruption. Just recently the main Police station in Basra was overrun by Mahdi Army militiamen apparently trying to free one of their prisoners.

The remaining UK troops in the south of Iraq are stationed in the airport outside of Basra and will only fight if attacked by insurgents or if the Iraqi forces require assistance.

North Korea shuts down Yongbyon reactor

United Nations nuclear inspectors have confirmed the closure of North Korea's main nuclear recator, Yongbyon.

The closure is part of a deal agreed in six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan, China, and the US. In return for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor North Korea will be given 50,000 tons of fuel aid along with another 950,000 tons of fuel for shutting down all of its nuclear facilites.

The first shipment of fuel aid arrived in North Korea last week and on Monday around 7,500 tons of fuel were sent off to Nampo in the West of North Korea.

The six-party talks were started in Februrary of this year amid fears after North Korea test fired a nuclear missile that was rumored to be capable of reaching American soil. The talks broke down when North Korea asked that $25 million be released from a Macau bank which were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department after rumors of laundering and counterfeiting.

Earthquakes strike Japan

Hundreds of homes and businesses in the Japanese city of Kashiwazaki have been destroyed along with a leak of water containing radioactive material from the Kashiwazaki nuclear plant after two earthquakes struck the island.

Authorities said the leaked radioactive water posed no threat to the environment and the plant was shut down before the second earthquake, measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, struck.

Around nine people have been killed with hundreds more injured. The nine people, aged between 70 and 80, died from injuries during the earthquake.

More than seven thousand people were evacuated from their homes during aftershocks measuring 5.8 shook in Kashiwazaki.

Rescue workers have begun looking for survivors in destroyed buildings in the city but weather forecasters have warned of heavy rain, flooding, and even lightning in the area.

Google eats all the cookies

Cookies stored about a user's preferences while on Google websites will be deleted after 2 years, Google has announced.

Cookies are small files that contain information about a user's surfing habits and preferences while on a website.

In the past the cookies that Google kept were to be deleted around the year 2030.

Lost wallet found after 55 years

Taken from: BBC News

Lost wallet found after 55 years

A wallet misplaced during a romantic embrace has been returned to its forgetful owner after 55 years.

Two classic car collectors from the US state of Idaho found the wallet after it fell out of the back of a vintage car they were planning to restore.

After an internet search they found and contacted the owner, Glenn Goodlove.

Mr Goodlove said he probably lost the wallet in the back seat of his 1946 Hudson car while kissing a girl when he was home on leave from the US Navy.

"If it was in my sailor-mentality years, I might have attempted to, as they said in those years, 'make out,"' Mr Goodlove told the Idaho Twin Falls Times-News.

Vital clues

Jon Beck, 61, and Chuck Merrill, 72, bought the now-vintage vehicle in Idaho after placing an ad in a local newspaper to buy a classic car in need of restoration.

Since 1952, the car had travelled from Washington state, where Mr Goodlove's grandfather owned it, to finish up neglected in Idaho, changing hands several times en route.

Driving the car home after buying it, the collectors stopped at a restaurant and saw something had dislodged below the back seat.

"Like a couple of kids, we thought we had a goldmine," Mr Beck said.

Instead, they found some small change - the leather wallet held a $10 bill, Mr Goodlove's military ID, his Social Security card, his driver's licence and several jewellery receipts from 1952. But they were all in the name of Glenn Putnam.

After searching online, Mr Beck discovered that Mr Putnam had since changed his name to Glenn Goodlove and moved to San Diego, California.

He called Mr Goodlove, asking to speak to a man who used to drive a '46 Hudson.

"There was a silence for about 15 seconds," Mr Beck told the Twin Falls Times-News. "Then he said, 'Who is this?"'

Mr Goodlove, now 75, says he did not even remember losing the wallet, but the find has brought memories of his youth in Everett, Washington, flooding back.

"I could see the house and the car and the town and all the good stuff from living there," he said. "They've been flowing ever since he talked to me."

Mr Beck and Mr Merrill will post the wallet back to Mr Goodlove.

SpiralFrog to offer free music downloads

New website to offer free and legal music downloads.

The new website dubbed, SpiralFrog, which was supposed to be up and running this month but has now been put back to the end of January, will give MP3 owners the freedom of downloading audio and video content for free and more importantly legally.

The website will be able to give customers free music downloads by placing targeted advertisements on the website and while the customer is downloading the content.

However the service will have some drawbacks with the songs not being able to be put on CDs and the customer having to sign-in to the website at least once every month, not to mention that customers with iPods will not be able to play the songs on their iPod due to the songs being locked in Windows Media Audio format.

With more than 20 billion illegal music downloads in 2005 SpiralFrog may be a success story waiting to happen or it may crash and burn if too many restrictions are placed on the customer and the music. One thing is for sure people will be able to sleep calmly knowing that they have an alternative choice to downloading music illegally.

Discovery shuttle takes off for the ISS

The space shuttle Discovery was launched from the Kennedy Space Center around half past six(GMT)today. It was the second space shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster in February 2003 in which all of it's crew died.

The launch was recently delayed due to bad weather from thunderstorms. There was orders to delay the launch further for safety reasons but NASA officials said the shuttle was safe.

The shuttle took off from the launch pad leaving Earth towards the International Space Station(ISS)to test safety equipment.

NASA officials said there was debris falling of two minutes into the launch but they were not large enough to damage the shuttle.

Once in space Discovery will test new safety systems built onto the shuttle. The crew of seven will also test a new 15m-long robot arm to inspect the shuttles underside.

The space shuttle Columbia exploded in February 2003 after foam punctured the shuttle's wing.

NASA has said the space shuttle program would cease to exist in 2010.

Six thousand bodies!

According to the Iraqi Health Ministry, up to 6,000 bodies have been received by Baghdad's main mortuary this year alone. Most of the bodies were believed to be killed in sectarian killings. The numbers have increased each month with 1,068 in January, 1,110 in February, 1,294 in March, 1,155 in April, and 1,298 in May.

The numbers are expected to increase in the next month.

Boy dead over video games

Fifteen year old boy dead over video games in Japan.

Two brothers, one fifteen the other thirteen, got into a fight in Nagasaki over video games which ended in the death of the fifteen year old boy. So far the story goes that the older brother told the younger brother to clean up his games. Apparently the younger brother got angry and attacked him, kicking his torso and head. When authorities were called the mother said her older son was unconscious

The younger brother hasn't been charged yet but if he was he would most likely be tried as a juvenile.

Anyone order 40,000 suicide bombers?

Iranian officials have told press there is around 40,000 suicide bombers ready to attack British and American "sensitive points".

The 40,000 strong force has been dubbed the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards. The bombers were seen last month during a military march wearing olive-green uniforms with explosive packs around their waists.

During a speech, Dr. Hassan Abbasi, head of the Centre for Doctrinal Strategic Studies in the Revolutionary Guards told onlookers that twenty-nine Amercian and British sensitive points had been identified.

The force would be put into action if nuclear facilites in Iran were attack by American or British forces. Recruiting stations for the new unit throughout Iran require a person to give their birth certificate, name and address, and whether they would want to attack American targets or Israeli targets.

Pope calls for end to Iran nuclear crisis

Pope Beendict XVI called for a negotiated solution to the Iran nuclear crisis during his Easter message in Rome. The Pope said, "May an honourable solution be found for all parties, through honest and serious negotiations,".

He also asked for peace to, "prevail over the tragic violence that continues mercilessly to claim victims in Iraq".

Around 100,000 people gathered to hear the Pope's message in St Peter's square.

Digging begun on pyramid in Bosnia

A team of Archeologists led by Semir Osmanagic have begun to dig a pryamid shaped hill in Bosnia to see if there is a pyramid under it. The archeologists have already found tunnels leading to the left and right to smaller pryamid shaped hills which the team thinks could be other smaller pryamid.

The hill, which overlooks the town of Visoko, is called Visocica and measures 650m.

So far the team(which also comprises of rescue workers and geologists) have concluded that the hill isn't a natural formation and the tunnels could only have been man-made.

Three injured on construction site

Scaffolding on a construction site in Milton Keynes has collapsed injuring three workers. The injured workers are currently in hospital with two in a serious condition while the other is said to be stable.

According to investigators the scaffolding collapsed because of strong winds but they are still searching as to what happened. Specialist equipment is being used to search for anyone else that might be trapped under the rubble.

An eye-witness said, "It came down like a pack of cards.".

Two hundred workers were said to be on the site when it collapsed but many of them were on their lunch breaks. A search for anyone else under the rubble is still on-going.